


love stories like campfire tales

by ArsenicInYourPudding



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Summer Camp AU, first thing i manage to write in ALMOST A YEAR and it's this garbage, oh well it's your problem now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 23:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15617037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicInYourPudding/pseuds/ArsenicInYourPudding
Summary: Camp Nelson is a summer camp for underprivileged kids. Campers who have aged out of the program can apply to come back as staff for the summer - it's better than getting a summer job at Wendy's, probably. Kaldur's applied to be an aide to the camp nurse during the summer before he graduates. He wanted to give back to the place he spent so many summers as a kid.If he'd known that Roy Harper was going to be there, he probably would have reconsidered.





	love stories like campfire tales

The general store had never had air conditioning. Kaldur remembered this as soon as he stepped inside, grimacing as he pushed through a block of sun-warmed humidity past the glass doors. A pair of antique swiveling fans on countertops and a box fan stationed in the doorway to the back room moved the air and its resident dust motes in sluggish currents around the chaotic retail environment. In the corner just behind the counter, an older woman slouched in a rocking chair, watching what appeared to be a wrestling match on a crackling tv perched on a windowsill. 

Kaldur wound through the chaotic, overstuffed shelves to an ice-box style refrigerator with a glass door. The motor inside hummed mightily, straining to maintain a low temperature against the early June heat wave. He studied the offerings through the door, not wanting to leave the door open for any longer than necessary, before reaching in and selecting a Squirt from a middle shelf. The plastic beaded almost instantly with condensation when it hit the warm air outside the fridge.

He leaned around a shelf to glance back out the front doors. Several cars had pulled in since he stepped off the bus, their passengers eagerly greeting the other teenagers loitering in the parking lot. Several wore matching t-shirts, artifacts of past summers at Camp Nelson. Kaldur let the door to the fridge fall shut, sighing as the cool air spilling out was cut off, and set about weaving through the cramped aisles.

He found a pack of Skittles, a childhood vice he wasn’t able to indulge very often anymore. He frowned at the flavors on the back - how could they replace lime with green apple? It didn’t stop him from shuffling the pack of Skittles behind the soda bottle in his hand.

His path through the store took him past a wire rack of postcards. He paused, considering buying a couple to send home, and to his mentor. He decided against it, ultimately - if he remembered right, there had always been a stack available in the camp store. He proceeded up to the counter, setting his purchases down on the counter. The scratches gouged into the wood nearly unbalanced his soda.

The woman in the rocking chair looked over at him. Sighing, she pulled herself out of the chair and shuffled over. She pinched her t-shirt, blue and green tie-dye that had nearly faded back to white, and pulled it out away from her chest, jerking it in an attempt to fan some kind of air flow next to her skin. “Just that for you,” she asked, her voice rough with age and cigarette smoke.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kaldur said, giving her a small, polite smile. She raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed, and punched at the cracked vinyl buttons on the cash register. He looked away, waiting for her to finish abusing the register.

“Two eighty-seven,” she said, and turned to cover a hacking cough in the crook of her elbow.

Kaldur pulled his wallet out of his pocket. Its new leather creaked as he unfolded it - it had been a gift from his mentor on his last birthday, but there was never much cause to carry a wallet at a military academy. He picked through the stack of fifties and twenties inside - the cumulative $300 he’d been given for the summer - until he found a weathered five. He held it out to her.

The woman made change without looking, her attention drifting back to the wrestling match. The picture fuzzed out for a second, and the woman huffed impatiently, thrusting his change out toward him. She barely waited for him to fumble for it before heading for the TV. She bent the precarious rabbit ears this way and that for a minute, before scowling and giving the side of the box an open-handed slap. Kaldur winced, but the picture came a little more into focus. She cleared her throat. “Receipt,” she asked over her shoulder.

“No thank you, ma’am,” Kaldur said, shoving his change into his wallet and scooping up his purchase. “Have a nice day.”

She gave him a little grunt and a half-hearted wave as she returned to her rocking chair. Kaldur pulled the door open and stepped out into the blistering sunshine, cracking open his Squirt.

A teenage boy in a track jacket and sunglasses jerked his head upward at Kaldur. “What’s up,” he called across the parking lot, and the pair of teenagers he had been talking to turned to look at Kaldur. Awkwardly, Kaldur lifted his soda in a salute, but didn’t venture over to the group. He knew Robin vaguely - mostly by legend, if he was being honest. For as colorful as Camp Nelson’s campers tended to be, Robin stood out as either the most interesting, or the best liar who had attended in recent memory. He  _ claimed _ to be in Witness Protection, which was why he could never take his sunglasses off, even around the campfire, and could never tell anyone his real name. Kaldur assumed that the camp’s permanent staff knew the real answer, but he’d never presumed to ask.

Robin grinned and turned back to his conversation, unoffended that Kaldur had declined to join in. Kaldur found a tree stump in a shady spot near the corner of the general store’s parking lot, perching on it to watch the group of teenagers grow in fits and starts.

A light blue minivan rolled into the parking lot, worn out brakes squealing. Almost everyone loitering winced. It rolled into a parking space and idled for about thirty seconds before shutting off. After a few more minutes, the passenger door opened and a girl with her hair pulled back into a tight, high ponytail stepped out of the car. She looked around the parking lot for a second before going to the back of the van and opening the hatch. She dragged a stuffed duffel bag and a white garbage bag out of the back and called, “Bye Mom, I’ll call you when I can,” into the car before slamming the back hatch. She stepped into the parking space next to the van and watched as it rolled backwards, brakes squeaking faintly again. Kaldur saw the driver, a woman of indeterminate age or ethnicity through the tinted windows, wave at her. The girl shifted her duffel bag to give her a lax two-fingered salute.

The girl turned away as the van squealed its way back out onto Main Street. She spotted Kaldur in his shady spot under the tree and hoisted her luggage to move in his direction. Kaldur sat up and slid off the tree stump, leaving his soda and Skittles to help her carry her belongings into the shade. “I can’t believe you actually showed up,” Artemis told him, laughing as she attempted to swat him away from taking the garbage bag. Kaldur made several grabs for it, but ultimately Artemis was the one to drop both bags to the thinning grass next to the tree stump. “At  _ summer camp _ .”

Kaldur smiled as she dropped to the ground, kicking her legs out in front of her and leaning back against her duffel bag. He sat down next to her and grabbed his soda off the stump. “I think they’re intending to count it as a  _ field medic internship _ . Or possibly  _ service leadership project _ . There were a lot of buzzwords thrown around the last time we talked about it.”

Artemis laughed. “With Col. Orin, I have no doubt. Whatever, he can say anything to justify what he wants to happen.” She had only been at the military school he attended for a year, but her assessment of the faculty had been quick and frighteningly accurate. She leaned away from him for a minute to give herself some momentum when she swung her shoulder into his. Kaldur let the impact roll him to the side before sitting upright again. She grinned at him. “I’m just glad you’re here. I think the only person I knew on staff last summer was Boy Wonder.” She nodded to Robin, who was now doing a one-handed handstand, gesturing wildly with his other arm. Then she grimaced. “And his  _ loyal sidekick _ .”

Kaldur smiled. “I’m sure you made  _ many  _ friends,” he said. It was an effort to keep his expression serene. Artemis punched his shoulder, laughing.

“You’re a dick,” she grinned. Kaldur raised his eyebrows, as if to say  _ Who, me? _ Artemis shook her head and swiped his soda out of his hand, holding out her middle finger as she took a sip.

He shook his head, taking his soda back when she lowered it from her mouth. “How’s your mom?”

Artemis sighed, leaning back into her duffel bag. “She’s okay,” she said, crossing her arms and looking out toward the street. She looked pensive for a minute, and Kaldur waited. Abruptly, she slumped even further. “It’s been hard this year,” she said, staring at her high tops. “Like, it’s  _ sucked _ , but I think we both got used to it sucking? And then I’m home, and it just feels....bad. Wrong. I dunno.”

Kaldur nodded wordlessly, and offered her the torn corner of his package of Skittles. She mumbled something indistinct and squeezed a small handful out into her palm, repositioning to lean against his shoulder. “How’s  _ your  _ mom,” she asked.

“She’s well,” Kaldur said with a small smile. “On a research vessel in the South Pacific right now. I haven’t spoken to her in a while - coordinating time zones is awkward, especially since I’m not at school.”

Artemis hummed. “Probably not going to be much opportunity over the summer, anyway,” she noted. “You’ll be up to your elbows in calamine lotion because these kids have never seen a  _ plant  _ in their sad little lives, let alone poison ivy.”

Kaldur laughed. “Be kind, everyone has a first summer.”

She pushed at him, smiling, and opened her mouth to reply when a diesel engine rumbled and coughed its way into the parking lot. A red Ford pickup, the roof of the cab almost covered in rust, rolled into the parking lot and circled for a spot near the back. Kaldur and Artemis watched as the driver maneuvered around to back into the parking space. “Jesus,” Artemis laughed, derisive. “Definitely a guy.”

The truck shuddered as the engine shut off, the silence ringing for several seconds despite the conversations resuming around the parking lot. The driver’s door creaked angrily as it opened. A redhead in a light green camp shirt, rolled up at the shoulders to showcase his biceps, stepped out of the truck, his hiking boots crunching against the old asphalt. He stretched his arms above his head and twisted at the waist, stretching after a presumably long drive.

Another redhead, shorter and thinner, emerged from behind the driver’s seat, folding it forward to climb out. He headed immediately for Robin, exchanging an exuberant and complicated secret handshake. Artems scowled. “Christ,” she mumbled, “I was hoping he wouldn’t come back.”

On the other side of the truck, the passenger door opened a bit more carefully than the driver’s door had. A young man with dark hair and even broader shoulders than the driver stepped out, looking around for a second before folding his seat forward and reaching into the cab. A slender hand perched in his and a teenage girl poked her head out, leaning on the boy as she stepped out onto the running board. Her floral print skirt swirled around her legs as she stepped out into the sunlight, reaching back for a sunhat on the back bench of the truck. She leaned up on her toes and kissed his cheek, lacing their fingers together.

“Oh, ew,” Artemis commented. Kaldur jostled her gently.

The driver came around to the bed of the truck. He dropped the tailgate and hopped up to kneel on it, dragging duffel bags and suitcases piled up against the cab backward. “Kid Mouth,” he yelled across the parking lot.

Kaldur froze. He knew that voice. Not the pitch - the last time he had heard it, the voice was about two octaves higher and cracking with puberty - but the tone, the explosive vowels. Suddenly, he was five years younger, holding a rubber dodgeball and gritting his teeth, his awkward, childish self-control on a rapidly dwindling fuse. “Oh, no,” he murmured under his breath.

Artemis sat up quickly. “What,” she asked, looking at him with such intense interest that he couldn’t meet her gaze. “ _ What _ , what happened?”

Kaldur cleared his throat. “I might know him,” he said, his voice weak.

Her head whipped back around, her ponytail flipping over her shoulder. She pushed it back with an impatient hand. “Which one? Romeo?” She gestured to the boy, now positioned at the fringes of Robin’s conversational knot, his apparent girlfriend leaning against his chest.

“No,” Kaldur said, forcing the words out. “The driver. Roy something, I think.”

Artemis studied the redhead still perched on the tailgate with a scientific squint. “So what, is he a dick?”

Kaldur laughed weakly. “You might say that. I almost broke his nose.”

“Are you  _ kidding me _ ?” Artemis turned back to him, looking unexpectedly delighted. She gave him a congratulatory punch on the shoulder. “ _ Kaldur,  _ I didn’t think you had it in you!”

He rolled his eyes. “I doubt he would be so enthusiastic about it,” he said, trying to study him without overtly staring. His hands were slick from the condensation on the outside of his soda bottle - or at least, that’s what he told himself.

Artemis paused, eyes narrowed at him, before nudging him with her elbow. “I mean, it’s not like you’re  _ general population  _ anymore. You could go the whole summer without talking to him, unless he like, breaks his arm or gets food poisoning or something.”

The thought did make Kaldur feel marginally better. He took a sip of his soda.

The pair watched the crowd in the parking lot grow by fits and starts, high school and college students arriving in car pools, or escorted by the occasional parent. Almost everyone seemed to know at least someone else already present, and they greeted each other enthusiastically. Kaldur’s gaze kept flickering back to Roy, who lingered by his truck as though disinterested in engaging with the flock of teenagers.

After another half hour, the low rumble of a large diesel engine announced the arrival of the Camp Nelson bus, a reformed school bus with the camp’s logo hand-painted on the side. It pulled into the parking lot with its elderly steering column complaining as it turned. The brakes hissed faintly as it stopped in the middle of the lane. A blonde woman in grey shorts and a dark blue t-shirt swung down off the bus’s stairs, a clipboard in hand.

Across the parking lot, teenagers began gathering their belongings. Duffel bags swung onto shoulders, sleeping bags and pillows juggled awkwardly as the assembled camp staff gathered around the bus.

“Afternoon, everybody,” Dinah Lance, the camp’s activities director, said loudly. Her powers of vocal projection were legendary. “Welcome back to camp!” A smattering of cheers and applause responded, and she smiled. “I assume you all know the drill - single file, anyone bringing a car up toward the back.”

Kaldur and Artemis straggled up as the group formed, if not a single-file line, then at least an elongated blob. They found a place somewhere in the middle as Dinah began to check people off the list on her clipboard. Ahead of them, the other redhead from Roy’s truck greeted Dinah with a flirtatious exuberance that made Kaldur cringe. Dinah swatted him on the top of the head with the clipboard and shooed him onto the bus. Artemis rolled her eyes toward Kaldur and gagged theatrically.

When they got to the front of the line, Dinah flipped a page on her clipboard. “Congrats, kiddo,” she told Artemis with a pleased smile. “You made program staff this year.” Artemis smiled widely, genuinely pleased, and hoisted her belongings onto the bus. Kaldur watched out of the corner of his eye as she made for the back.

“Welcome back, Kaldur,” Dinah said, softening a little from her usual tough enthusiasm. “It’s good to see you again.” Kaldur ducked his head a little. He had spent a good week in Dinah’s office during his last summer as a camper, anxiously awaiting phone calls and trying to be circumspect about explaining his parents’ rocky custody battle. She sent him a postcard on his birthday, which Kaldur knew she did for all campers, but he had not contacted her since he left early that summer.

“It’s good to see you too,” he mumbled, adjusting his grip on his luggage.

“We’ll have to catch up sometime,” she said, glancing down at her list. Her eyebrows raised, and she gave him an intrigued smile. “Looks like you’re going to be spending the summer with J’onn. That should be very interesting for you.”

“Your use of the word  _ interesting  _ makes me very worried,” Kaldur said, and she laughed.

“It’ll be good, I promise. J’onn’s very easy to get along with, as far as supervisors go. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to coax out a war story or two.” J’onn had immigrated to the States from some African country that he didn’t talk about. Legend went that he had been a battlefield medic during one of the tribal wars, but no one knew for sure.

Kaldur nodded and made his way onto the bus. Artemis waved at him from her seat three rows from the back. Her duffel bag and bedding were already cradled in the thick military netting hanging from the ceiling as a luggage rack. Kaldur stowed his luggage next to hers and sat, taking a drink from his soda.

They watched out the window as the line dwindled, until the campers that checked in with Dinah were peeling off to go back to their cars, rather than getting onto the bus. Dinah used her clipboard to whack Roy’s shoulder when he got up to her. She gestured to his truck and cocked her head to the side as Roy said something defensive, his posture stiffening. She tilted forward a bit and said something, and he relaxed, laughing. They talked for another minute or so, and then Roy turned, long strides taking him back toward his truck. Kaldur let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

The last of the camp staff peeled away from the bus. Dinah checked her list one more time, tapping her pen against each entry on the list. Periodically, she stopped to write a note by someone’s name. At last, she turned and took the steps two at a time to get back onto the bus. “Alright,” she said loudly, conversation wilting to a dull murmur. “I’m not a flight attendant and we’re only going thirty miles, so don’t expect a safety briefing from me on this rig. Just make sure your stuff isn’t going to give someone a concussion and don’t make me turn this bus around.” There was a ripple of laughter like someone throwing a handful of gravel into a lake, and Dinah slid into the driver’s seat.

“Huh,” Artemis said, and Kaldur turned to see Roy carrying an Army Surplus rucksack across the parking lot. He hopped onto the bus and turned down the aisle, heading toward the back.

Kaldur ducked his head. The only open bench was in front of them, and he doubted that Roy would share with someone further up the bus.  _ He probably doesn’t remember you,  _ Kaldur told himself with a fierce sort of desperation.  _ It’s been years, you’ve both gone through puberty, it was one time-- _

Roy all but threw his rucksack up into the cargo netting and dropped into the seat in front of them, legs thrown out sideways into the aisle and his arm draped over the back of the seat. He looked around, pausing when his eyes landed on Kaldur.

Kaldur forced himself to breathe, muscles tense for a fight and nerves braced for the inevitable reprimand.

Roy blinked, and then bizarrely, he smiled. “Hey,” he said, leaning against the back of his seat, “Kaldur, right?” Kaldur looked up, startled by his expression, and nodded warily. Roy’s smile got wider, and he held a hand out across the back of his seat. “Roy Harper. I think you broke my nose when I was thirteen.”


End file.
